Developer based document collaboration

ABSTRACT

Organizations maintain and generate large amounts of documentation and entities of these organizations often need to collaborate on generating and reviewing this information. There is a need to maintain and store this documentation remotely in such a way that the entities of these organizations may collaborate with each other. A document management a collaboration system is provided to enable entities to collaborate with each other. Furthermore, developers may interface with the document management and collaboration system to provide add-in services and components to the document management and collaboration system. These add-in service and components may expand the capabilities of the documents and collaborations enabled by the document management and collaboration system.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No.14/175,870, filed Feb. 7, 2014, entitled “DEVELOPER BASED DOCUMENTCOLLABORATION,” the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated herein inits entirety. This application also incorporates by reference for allpurposes the full disclosure of co-pending U.S. patent application Ser.No. 14/077,204, filed on Nov. 11, 2013, entitled “DOCUMENT MANAGEMENTAND COLLABORATION SYSTEM.”

BACKGROUND

The use of remote computing services, such as remote document storage,has greatly increased in recent years. An organization, for example, maysupport its operations using both internal networks of computingresources and computing resources managed by others. Computers of theorganization, for instance, may communicate with computers of otherorganizations to access and/or provide documents or other data whileusing services of another organization. In many instances, organizationsconfigure and operate remote networks using hardware managed by otherorganizations, thereby reducing infrastructure costs and achieving otheradvantages. With such configurations of computing resources, ensuringthat access to the resources and the data they hold can be challenging,especially given the multitude of different computing systems. Forexample, computers of the organization may include personal computers,tablets, smartphones, laptops and other devices.

Furthermore, ensuring that the documents and other data are displayeduniformly cross-platform is challenging given the variety of hardwareand software components of different devices. In addition to displayingdocuments and other data across a variety of platforms in a uniformmanner, there are challenges in allowing users of the organization toedit and collaborate with others when accessing or editing the documentsor other data on various devices.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Various embodiments in accordance with the present disclosure will bedescribed with reference to the drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 shows a diagram illustrating various aspects of the presentdisclosure;

FIG. 2 shows an illustrative example of an environment in which variousembodiments of the present disclosure may be practiced;

FIG. 3 shows a diagram illustrating a client application in accordancewith various aspects of the present disclosure;

FIG. 4 shows a diagram illustrating document management in accordancewith various aspects of the present disclosure;

FIG. 5 shows a diagram illustrating document management in accordancewith various aspects of the present disclosure;

FIG. 6 shows an illustrative example of a process for receiving adocument from a developer in accordance with at least one embodiment;

FIG. 7 shows an illustrative example of a process for performing anoperation on a document in accordance with at least one embodiment;

FIG. 8 shows an illustrative example of a process for transmitting adocument to a developer accordance with at least one embodiment; and

FIG. 9 illustrates an environment in which various embodiments can beimplemented.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

In the following description, various embodiments will be described. Forpurposes of explanation, specific configurations and details are setforth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the embodiments.However, it will also be apparent to one skilled in the art that theembodiments may be practiced without the specific details. Furthermore,well-known features may be omitted or simplified in order not to obscurethe embodiment being described.

Techniques described and suggested herein relate to enhancements fordocument management and document collaboration systems. The computerresource service provider (also referred to simply as a serviceprovider) may operate a document management and collaboration system toenable document collaboration between users of an organization. Thedocument management and collaboration system may be enhanced byconverting documents into a universal file format, such as portabledocument format (PDF), and allowing users to generate annotations orcomments for selected words and phrases in the document. Furthermore,the document management and collaboration system may be extended toallow third party developers the ability to interact with the documentmanagement and collaboration system and provide additional featuresand/or enhancements. For example, the service provider may expose anapplication programming interface (API) to developers and receive APIcalls from developer's systems enabling the developer's systems tointeract with the document management and collaboration system. The APIcalls may enable developers to store, manage and collaborate ondocuments using the document management and collaboration system.

Using the exposed API developers may add additional features to thedocument management and collaboration system. For example, a particulardeveloper may generate a unique file format and through the use of thedocument management and collaboration system API the developer may offerthe ability to collaborate on documents in the unique file format tousers of an organization. Furthermore, the developer may convertdocuments in the unique file format to PDF before calling the documentmanagement and collaboration system API. In another example, thedevelopers may add features to the document management and collaborationsystem. The features may include the ability to add pictures or othermedia to documents in the document management and collaboration system.The features may also include the ability to interact with the documentin a particular manner, such as the ability to make edits with theappearance of having been made with a red marker. The developers mayinclude the interactions in the document or the interactions may bestored in a separate file associated with the document. The document maybe transmitted by the developers to the document management andcollaboration system for storage, management and collaboration withusers. The document management and collaboration system may convert thedocument a universal file format or may receive the document from thedevelopers in a universal file format.

The document in universal file format may also be referred to as anunderlay. Furthermore, if the document in PDF format (either natively oronce it has been converted) is above a certain size it may becompressed, split into one or more documents, converted to another fileformat, the resolution of the document may be lowered or any othersuitable technique for reducing the document's size may be used beforethe coordinate map is generated based at least in part on the document.In various embodiments, users may transmit documents to remote computingresources operated by a computing resource service provider. The serviceprovider may, if the document is not already in a universal file format,convert the document to a universal file format. For example, a user maycreate a document on a computer system of an organization and transmitthe document to the service provider to enable remote storage of thedocument and collaboration on the document with other users of theorganization. The service provider may then convert the document into aPDF version using one or more services or systems of the serviceprovider. The service provider may then create a coordinate map based atleast in part on the document in PDF format and the Cartesian (or other)coordinate system of the PDF file format. The generated coordinate map(also referred to as an annotation index) may be used for displayinguser selections and annotations in the uploaded document. In variousembodiments, the coordinate map may be a separate file from the documentor may be included as information in the document. For example, thecoordinate map may be stored in the document converted to the universalfile format.

Users of the organization may request document(s) from the serviceprovider using one or more computing devices, such as a tablet,smartphone, laptop, desktop, electronic book reader, workstation or anyother suitable computing device. The service provider may then, as aresult of the request, transmit the document, the generated coordinatemap and any other data associated with the document to the computingdevice from which the user transmitted the request. The coordinate mapmay include one or more files generated from the document in theuniversal file format indicating the position of each word in thedocument or may be included in the document once it has been convertedto the appropriate file format. The PDF file format contains a deviceindependent coordinate system that may be used to display the PDF file.The coordinate map may be stored in the same remote storage systems asthe document or in one or more other remote storage systems. In variousembodiments, other data associated with the document includes comments,annotations or selections made by one or more users. Other dataassociated with the document may be combined into a single file (alsoreferred to as an overlay) for use in displaying collaboration betweenusers.

Once received by the computing device of the user, the computing devicemay display the document and the other data associated with the documentbased at least in part on the overlay, the coordinate map and theunderlay. For example, the coordinate map may provide the coordinatesfor each word in the document and the overlay may provide theannotations to the documents created by various users and the locationof the annotations relative to the coordinates of the words in thecoordinate map. The user may then collaborate on the document, such asby making selections and providing annotations to the document displayedto the user. The user's interactions with the document may be capturedby the computing device and stored locally until the user submits thedocument to the service provider for remote storage. For example, theuser may select a group of words from the document using a cursorcontrolled by a pointing device, such as a mouse. Once the user has madea selection and the computing device has determined that the user hascompleted the selection, the user may be prompted to perform one or moreother actions, such as providing a comment or selecting a highlightedfunction. The selection of words and actions performed by the user maybe stored locally and the computing device may capture one or more otheruser interactions with the document. Once the user has completedcollaboration on the document, the user may submit the document to theservice provider for storage by selecting the submit operation. Thecomputing device may then execute a batch job which transmits thelocally saved user interactions to the service provider.

The batch job may include the underlay, the coordinate map and overlayalong with the saved user interactions. Once received by the serviceprovider, the service provider may store the document as a new versionand update data corresponding to the document information. For example,the service provider may update the version information corresponding tothe document. Saving each newly uploaded document as a new version ofthe document may include determining if any changes were made to thedocument, generating new underlays and overlays for the document,updating one or more search indexes corresponding to the document andnotifying collaborators and owners of the document that a new versionhas been uploaded. Furthermore, local versions of the document may bepreserved such that changes made to the document stored remotely willnot be reflected in the local documents until the user has uploadedtheir local files and updated the local client. The user may also selecta previous version of the document to roll back to. Each new version ofthe document may be assigned a new version identification number butretain that same document identification number. Saving each newlysubmitted document as a new version of the same document and preservinglocal files until they are submitted facilitates collaboration on thedocument without the need to use other files to manage conflicts betweendocument versions.

In various embodiments, the saved user interactions include locationcoordinates for the words selected by the user and annotationsassociated with the location coordinates. This information may be storedseparately as a new version of the overlay in a storage systemmaintained by the service provider, or may overwrite a previously storedversion of the overlay or may be stored in the document itself. One ormore databases may be used to record information corresponding to theunderlay, coordinate map and overlay and the database may also containthe location of the underlay, coordinate map and overlay.

The coordinate map, overlay and other information generated based atleast in part on various users' interaction with the document may beused to insert or add information to the document. For example, a usermay select a portion of text in the document and associate a commentwith the selected portion of text. The selection of text and associatedcomment may be stored by the service provider and may be inserted as aselection of text and associated comment into a version of the document.Annotations and/or comments generated by the users may also be insertedinline as text directly into the document or into a new version of thedocument. The document or new version of the document may then beprocessed by the service provider in order to generate a new underlayand coordinate map for the document. The annotations and/or commentsgenerated by the users may be inserted or added to the documentautomatically once the overlay and other information has been receivedby the service provider or an author (also referred to as an owner) ofthe document may receive an indication that annotations and/or commentshave been received and the author may select particular annotationsand/or comments to insert into the document.

One or more applications causing the document to the displayed to theusers may indicate to the user that the user's interactions with thedocument are being saved directly to the document. The one or moreapplications may then store the user's interactions with the document inthe overlay and transmit the overlay to the service provider. Theservice provider may then insert information into the document based atleast in part on the user's interactions with the document stored in theoverlay. The service provider may also provide the users with access toone or more previous versions of the document such that the users canview one or more changes between different versions of the document.Furthermore, comments or other changes made to a particular version ofthe document may be requested by the users and the service provider may,in response to the request, provide the comments or other changes madein the document format the document was in when uploaded by the userresponsible for uploading the document or some other format.

When the users publish a comment and/or annotation or the author acceptsa comment and/or annotation, the service provider may receive anindication to insert the comment and/or annotation into the document.For example, the author of a document may access the document includingcomments and annotations using a single-page application (SPA) websiteoperated by the service provider and select at least a portion of thecomments and annotations to be inserted into the document. The SPAwebsite may then transmit a request to one or more services of theservice provider to insert the comments and annotations selected by theauthor. In another example, the service provider may automaticallyinsert all comments and annotations published by users authorized tocollaborate on the document. The service provider or one or moreservices of the service provider may then receive the comment and/orannotation as an overlay associated with the document and retrieve theassociated document. The service provider may, using one or moresoftware libraries corresponding to the document format, extract thecomment and/or annotation from the overlay and insert the comment and/orannotation into the document based at least in part on the coordinatemap and information contained in the overlay. The document generatedfrom inserting the comment and/or annotation may be stored by theservice provider, and the document may also be processed in order togenerate a new underlay and coordinate map. The new underlay andcoordinate map may enable other users to interact with the document.

The user's documents, including the underlay and overlay correspondingto the documents, may be processed by one or more systems or services ofthe service provider to enable document collaboration between differentusers on different devices in a homogenous manner across a variety ofdifferent software and hardware architectures. The service provider mayconvert all the documents to a document format which uses a deviceindependent coordinate system to describe the surface of a page in thedocument. The documents may then be processed by the service provider asa stream of text in order to determine the location coordinates of eachcharacter. Each character's location may be determined by creating abounding box around the characters. The service provider may thendetermine a bounding box for each line of the document. Based at leastin part on the line bounding boxes and the character bounding boxes, theservice provider may determine bounding boxes for the words in thedocument. Determining the bounding boxes for all the words in thedocument allows for selected text comments and annotations to bedisplayed in a uniform way across multiple different devices. Theservice provider processing normalizes the documents so that they can bedisplayed in an identical manner across a variety of different platformsand avoid loading on the computing devices of the user. The coordinatemap enables consistent display of the information contained in theoverlay across multiple computing devices with different displaycharacteristics, such as different resolutions, different display sizes,different aspect ratios and any other differences between the displaysof the multiple devices. When used by the computing device to displaythe document, the coordinate causes the annotations to be displayed inconnection with the same words regardless of the display characteristicsof a particular display that displays the overlay and document.

A variety of third party developer (also referred to simply as adeveloper) may interface with the document management and collaborationsystem in order to utilize one or more features and capabilities of thedocument management and collaboration system. Developers may provide avariety of goods and service to customer and communicate with thedocument management and collaboration system in order to enable customerof the developer to access the document management and collaborationsystem. For example, the developer may offer an application configuredto interface with the document management and collaboration system andenable customer using the application to access the document managementand collaboration system features. Developers may also offer a componentor add-in to the document management and collaboration system. Forexample, the developer may offer a specific file format generated by thedeveloper that can be used with the document management andcollaboration system thereby enabling customers of the developer toreceive collaboration on a document in the specific file formatgenerated by the developer. The developer may use one or more API callsor a software development kit (SDK) to communicate and otherwiseinterface with the document management and collaboration system. Thedocument management and collaboration system API may use arepresentational state transfer (REST) protocol in order to enabledevelopers to generate API calls configured to communicate with thedocument management and collaboration system.

The developer may use the API to transmit documents to the documentmanagement and collaboration system to be saved with the documentmanagement and collaboration system. The developer may also use the APIto retrieve documents from the document management and collaboration orcause the document management and collaboration system to perform one ormore operations on documents. For example, the developer may transmitand API request to the document management and collaboration system thatcauses the document management and collaboration system to insert textor images into documents. The developer may create or edit all or aportion of the data used by the document management and collaborationsystem. For example, the developer may generate the underlay to be usedby the document management and collaboration system for a particulardocument or document type. In another example, the developer maygenerate the overlay corresponding to a document.

FIG. 1 shows an illustrative example of an aspect of a documentcollaboration system in accordance with the present disclosure.Accordingly, FIG. 1 shows environment 100 which illustrates an exampleof a customer operating a computing device 102, such as a smartphone ortablet. During operation of the computing device 102 a user may interactwith the computing device and cause operations on one or more documentsand/or the creation of one or more documents. The documents andoperations performed by the user may be saved locally on the computingdevice 102. The computing device may then, as a result of a request bythe user, transmit the document(s) 104 to one or more systems 106 of thecomputing resource service provider. The one or more systems 106 of theservice provider may be used by the service provider to provide servicesand resources. The documents 104 may be newly created documents by theuser on the computing device 102 or the documents may be new versions ofalready existing documents which the user has collaborated on. Thecomputing device 102 may transmit, to the service provider, the documentand other data corresponding to the document such as metadata, userdata, version data, underlay, overlay, comments, annotations, documentidentification information, coordinate map or any other data suitablefor document collaboration.

Once received by the service provider, various systems 106 of theservice provider may process the documents. For example, a system of theservice provider may update a database with information corresponding tothe document. Various other files may be created by one or more systemsof the service provider such as the overlay, the coordinate map and theunderlay. In various embodiments, the received documents 104 areconverted to a universal file format (referred to as the underlay) fromwhich the coordinate map may be created. File formats may includeportable document format (PDF), an image file or any file format capableof identical display across different computing devices. The serviceprovider may also generate an overlay based on the data submitted withthe document. The underlay and the coordinate map may be used touniformly display annotations and other information in the documents onother computing devices. One or more systems 106 of the service providermay store the original documents, the converted document, the coordinatemap generated from the converted document, the overlay created and anyother data corresponding to the document. Other data may include versionhistory, permission, requests and any other data suitable for documentcollaboration.

Another user may request, from computing device 110, one or moredocuments 108 from the service provider. In various embodiments,documents 108 are the same as documents 104 transmitted from computingdevice 102. Computing device 110 may send a request to a system 106 ofthe service provider. The service provider may determine the documentidentifier from the submitted request and query a database to determinethe location of the requested document and the corresponding files. Thedocument identifier may be a globally unique identifier for a documentwhich may be separate from a version identifier which may identify aparticular version of the document. The corresponding files may includethe coordinate map, overlay and any metadata associated with thedocuments. The service provider may collect the files and transmit thecollected files to the computing device 110. In various embodiments, theservice provider transmits the location of the files to the computingdevice 110 and the computing device requests the documents directly fromthe location transmitted.

In various embodiments, the user interacts with documents 104 oncomputing device 102. The interactions are stored in the overlayassociated with documents 104 and transmitted to the system 106 of theservice provider. The service provider then inserts the user'sinteractions stored in the overlay into the documents and creates newversions of the documents 108. The documents 108 containing the userinteractions may be processed to generate a new underlay and coordinatemap such that when the documents 108 are displayed by computing device110 the display contains the user's interaction performed usingcomputing device 102. The documents 108 transmitted to computing device110 may include a new overlay associated with documents 108 or thecomputing device 110 may generate a new overlay upon receipt of thedocuments 108. The new overlay may enable user's interactions with thedocuments 108 to be captured and stored by computing device 110.

Once the computing device 110 has received the documents 108 andcorresponding files, the documents may be displayed in such a way thatwhen displayed on computing device 110, the documents appear the same aswhen displayed on computing device 102. For example, the serviceprovider may transmit the overlay, underlay, the coordinate map and thecorresponding metadata. The computing device 110 may use the coordinatemap to determine where to draw the annotations stored in the overlay,such that they appear in the same place as the annotations appeared inthe document when displayed by computing device 102. Various devices maydisplay the images differently due to different screen sizes andresolutions, but the determination of where to draw the annotations isbased on a device independent coordinate system and is not affected bydifferences in devices. If the service provider has inserted theinformation from the overlay into the document, the document may bedisplayed on computing device 110.

FIG. 2 shows environment 200 which illustrates an example of thefunctional entities of the front-end system and the document managementand collaboration system in accordance with at least one embodiment. Thefront-end system 204 includes a web server 232, an application service234, a management console 236, control plane service 238 and a presenceservice 240. The web server 232 may be a collection of computingresources collectively configured to enable the execution of a website,a single-page web application or a single-page interface that permits auser to transmit or upload documents to the document management andcollaboration system 206 and manage the documents. The web server mayfurther enable the user to view and edit documents, underlays oroverlays or particular portions of the documents, underlays or overlays.The web server may also enable the user to provide commentary orfeedback on the documents, underlays or overlays. The web server 232 mayalso enable an administrator or a user to set permissions or share modesthat specify the privileges given to a user in accessing documents. Inaddition, the web server may enable users or devices to submitauthentication credentials. The content distribution edge network may beused to distribute content of the web server 232. The actions performedby the user may be done via a website, an application or a managementconsole and the web server 232 may enable executing the website,application or management console. Although one web server 232 isdescribed with reference to FIG. 2 it may be contemplated that multipleweb servers of any type may be used, whereby a portion of the webservers may be redundant.

The application service 234 may be a collection of computing devices andother resources collectively configured to serve as a user-exposedservice that receives requests from the user and services the requests.A user request may be made using a website or a management consoleaccessible to the user or a client that is executed on a user's deviceand may make service requests on behalf of the user. The request may bean API function call and the application service 234 may process therequest and manage its execution. The application service 234 may causethe synchronous execution of actions associated with a received requestor alternatively may cause one or more actions that require more complexprocessing to be queued for asynchronous execution. The applicationservice 234 may also be responsible for receiving user credentials andrequest authentication of the user from an authentication service. Tocause the performance of operations requested by the user, theapplication service 234 may make one or more function calls to servicesor entities of the computing resource service provider. For example, theapplication service 234 may request user or access token validation fromthe managed directory service or may cause search indices maintained bythe customer search service 224 to be updated. The application service234 may also receive API requests or other requests from the developerand cause execution of the requests by one or more systems or servicesof the document management and collaboration system 206.

The management console 236 may be a collection of computing devices andother resources collectively configured to permit organizations,administrators and users to register for utilizing document managementand collaboration services. The management console 236 may be used inaddition or as an alternative to a website or an application running ona user device and may permit users and administrators to make servicerequests using appropriately configured API function calls. For example,the management console 236 may be used for inviting a user to join adocument collaboration system and view and collaborate on documents.Further, the management console 236 may be used for allowing dashboardaccess, audit log access, permission setting (for example, foradministrators and user), storage limit setting (for example, fororganizations and users) and security setting (for example, password andencryption). The control plane service 238 of the front-end system 204may be a collection of computing devices and other resourcescollectively configured to serve as an interface that enables creatingnew computing instances for document collaboration and management.

The presence service 240 of the front-end system 204 may be a collectionof computing devices and other resources collectively configured toprovide information to users near contemporaneously with the generationof the information. The presence service 240 may communicate with one ormore services of the document management and collaboration system 206 inorder to provide information to one or more users. The presence service240 may implement a Web Socket or other protocol to enable users of thedocument management and collaboration system 206 to receive updates todocuments managed by the document management and collaboration system206. The presence service 240 may provide a bi-directionalcommunications channel between single-page web application or clientapplication operated by the user and the web server 232 or one or moreother services of the document management and collaboration system 206.For example, multiple users may edit a document simultaneously, such asduring a meeting, the presence service 240 may receive updates to thedocument corresponding to users' interaction with the document throughthe particular user's client application. The presence service 240 maythe transmit information corresponding to the users' interaction to atleast one of the multiple users editing the document simultaneously suchthat at least one users received real-time updates to the document.

The document management and collaboration system 206 includes anasynchronous service 242, a search service 244, an asynchronous searchengine 246, an underlay asynchronous engine 248, a master asynchronousengine 252, injection asynchronous engine 256 and a directory serviceauthorization interface 254. The asynchronous service 242 may be acollection of computing devices and other resources collectivelyconfigured to manage the execution of asynchronous workflows. Theasynchronous service 242 may include or be connected to a queue thatstores asynchronous events for execution. The asynchronous service 242may coordinate the execution of asynchronous workflows with the masterasynchronous engine 252, which may be responsible for schedulingactivities associated with the workflow. The activities may includeunderlay generation, text extraction and text insertion. As describedherein, the execution of workflow activities or tasks may be performedby engines or workers. For example, the asynchronous search engine 246may be tasked with performing text extraction activities and theunderlay asynchronous engine 248 may be tasked with performingactivities associated with underlay creation. Furthermore, the injectionasynchronous engine 256 may be tasked with injecting annotations andcomments into documents managed by the document management andcollaboration system 206.

The injection asynchronous engine 256 may be a collection of computingresources collectively configured to insert annotations and/or commentsinto documents. The injection asynchronous engine 256 may receivepublished comments and annotations and retrieve a copy documentassociated with the published comments and annotations. The document maybe in the document format as uploaded by the user responsible for thedocument or in another format. The injection asynchronous engine 256 maythen inject the annotations and comments into the document based atleast in part on information contained in the overlay associated withthe document. For example, the overlay may contain the coordinates forthe starting position and ending position for the in-line insertion of aparticular annotation. The injection asynchronous engine 256 may theninsert the particular annotation into the document using the coordinatesfor the starting position and the end position. Once the injectionasynchronous engine 256 completed injection of the received publishedcomments and annotations, the injection asynchronous engine 256 maycause the document to be saved in the object-level data storage serviceand enable one or more users associated with the document to access thedocument. Furthermore, the injection asynchronous engine 256 may causeone or more other asynchronous workflows to be initiated or queued. Forexample, after injection comments and annotations into a document, theinjection asynchronous engine 256 may cause the document to be queuedwith the asynchronous service 242 in order to generate an underlay forthe document and update the search service 244.

In the course of executing asynchronous workflows, the asynchronoussearch engine 246, the underlay asynchronous engine 248, and theinjection asynchronous engine 256 may obtain or download documents orfiles from the object-level data storage service and cause documents orfiles to be stored in the object-level data storage service. Further,the engines may generate documents of any file type based on receiveddocuments, perform text extraction, text injection and storeannotations. In addition, the asynchronous search engine 246 may placesearch index updates associated with document in a queue for processingby the search service 244. The updates may be associated with searchindices maintained by the custom search service. The customer searchservice may be utilized for maintaining a search index of customerdocuments and their associated metadata. Further, to ensure consistentperformance the searchable metadata or customer documents may bereplicated to ensure consistent performance and guard against outages.

The search service 244 may be a collection of computing devices andother resources collectively configured to perform batch processing onthe search index updates in the queue and launch a workflow forperforming search index update activities. Upon launching the workflow,the asynchronous search engine 246 causes search indices to be updatedin the custom search service 244. The directory service authorizationinterface 254 enables the document management and collaboration system206 to delegate user authentication to another entity such as themanaged directory service. The document management and collaborationsystem 206 may submit user access tokens to the authenticating party viathe directory service authorization interface 254 and may receive aresponse indicating whether a user may be authenticated.

FIG. 3 is an illustrative example of a client application 300 which maybe used to view, edit and create documents for use with the documentmanagement and collaboration system operated by the service provider.The client application may be executed by a computing device 302 such asthe computing devices described above with reference to FIG. 1.Returning to FIG. 3, the client application 300 may be responsible fordisplaying documents, capturing user interactions with the documents,transmitting documents and corresponding information to one or moresystems of the service provider, maintaining local copies of documentsand corresponding information, retrieving documents and correspondinginformation from one or more systems of the service provider,synchronizing local documents with documents stored remotely from thedevice by the service provider and any other operation suitable forenabling document management and collaboration. The client application300 may be part of a developer application providing services, access orcomponents to the document management and collaboration system.

The content illustrated in the client application 300 is illustrative innature and the type and appearance and amounts of content may vary inaccordance with various embodiments. The client application 300 may beprovided in various ways in accordance with various embodiments. Forexample, the client application 300 may be provided over a network tothe computing device 302 such as an application browser of the computingdevice.

As illustrated in FIG. 3, the client application 300 includes variousgraphical user interface elements that enable navigation throughout thedocument management and collaboration system of which the document 312is a part, as well as provide functionality developers by one or moredevelopers. In this example, the client application 300 is part of anenterprise level document management and collaboration system includingvarious interfaces for creating, editing and collaborating on variousdocuments. For instance, on the left-hand side of the client application300 various menu options 310 are provided, allowing actions to beperformed on various documents. The menu options 310 may include avariety of options generated by developers such as the “Draw Functions”shown in FIG. 3. In this example, the links appear as textual wordswhich enable the menu options 310 to be selected using an appropriateinput device such as a keyboard, mouse, touchscreen, or other inputdevice. Selection of a menu option 310 may cause the client application300 to execute one or more instructions stored in the memory of thecomputing device 302 causing performance of the selected menu option.For example, the user may select menu option 310 “Show User Comment,”and this selection by the user may cause the computing device 302 todisplay a list of users that have provided comments to the document 312.Using the appropriate input device, one or more users may be selectedfrom the list and the highlighted words and associated comments are thendisplayed. In this way, the client application 300 may display all or aportion of the comments and annotations in a document.

Client application 300 may also be used to insert features or componentsprovide by one or more developers into the document 312. The componentprovided by the one or more developers illustrated in the clientapplication 300 is illustrative in nature and the type and appearanceand amounts of components may vary in accordance with variousembodiments. Returning to FIG. 3, the component illustrated provides theuser the ability to draw a figure 308 on the document 312 using a finger306 and an input device, such as a touchscreen. Other input devices canbe used such as a pointing device, stylus, camera or system of cameras,motion detector or other device capable of capturing the user input. Thefigure 308 may include any figure the user may drawing includinghandwriting. The client application 300 may receive the figure 308 fromthe appropriate input device and cause information corresponding to thefigure 308 to be stored in the overlay associated with the document. Forexample, the figure 308 may be receive by the client application andstored as a graphical element in the overlay. The graphical element mayinclude one or more image files or information corresponding todisplaying figure 308. Furthermore client application may receive screencoordinates corresponding to figure 308 and convert the screencoordinate in to document coordinate for use with the overlay and thedocument management and collaboration system.

A user of the computing device 302 may receive a request from anotheruser to collaborate on a document. The request may be received by clientapplication 300 and the corresponding document and associated data maybe retrieved by the client application 300 from a remote storage systemoperated by the service provider such as the storage system. The clientapplication 300 may also be used to browse or view documents stored onthe remote storage system of the service provider. Documents stored bythe service provider may have one or more associated permissions, thepermissions may control not only access to the document by particularusers but also what documents are visible to a particular user whenbrowsing via the client application 300. In this manner a user maysearch for and select a document for editing. In various embodiments,the client application 300 provides a search option for the user. Theuser may then enter a keyword or other information and search thedocuments stored in the storage system operated by the service provider.Once the user has determined a document for editing, the one or moresystems of the service provider may determine a location of the documentand associated data and transmit the location information to the clientapplication 300. The one or more systems of the service provider mayalso transmit the documents and associated data directly to the clientapplication 300.

The client application 300 may display the document 312 using the dataretrieved from the remote storage system including the underlay,coordinate map and overlay. In various embodiments, the underlaycontains the document converted into the universal format with a deviceindependent coordinate system used for displaying the document and theoverlay contains the coordinates of user-selected text and associatedannotations. Using this information and information contained in thecoordinate map, the computing device 302 determines which coordinates touse when drawing the figure 308. Furthermore, the overlay or other dataassociated with the document may contain information corresponding tocomments and annotations inserted by one or more users into the document312 and a particular document version when the comments, annotations ordeveloper components where inserted into the document. For example,figure 308 may have been inserted or removed by a particular user in aprevious version of document 312. The user of computing device 302 maycause application 300 to display figure 308 or information correspondingto figure 308 by selection an option from the menu options 310.

The author or owner (or a group of authors or owners) of the document312 may select comments and annotations to include or exclude from thedocument or a particular version of the document. The author of thedocument may receive a notification that one or more collaborators haveprovided annotations, comments, developer components or otherinteraction with the document to the document management andcollaboration system. The author may have requested collaboration on thedocument from the one or more collaborators or the document managementand collaboration system may have selected the one or more collaboratorson behalf of the author. The author may then review the one or morecollaborators' interactions with the document 312 through the clientapplication 300. By selecting the appropriate option in the menu options310 the author may accept or remove user interactions with the document312. If the author accepts one or more interactions with the document,the document management and collaboration system may cause the one ormore interactions with the document to be injected into the document.For example, if the author accepts figure 308 the document managementand collaboration system may insert figure 308 and generate a newunderlay and coordinate map based at least in part on the document withfigure 308 inserted.

The user may then continue to interact with the document and enter moreannotations as described above. The user may scroll down using a scrollbar or some other input method. The user may also zoom in or zoom out ofthe document 312. This may cause the client application 300 to redrawthe document 312. Redrawing the document may change the size and amountof text shown on the screen, but does not affect the coordinates of theword bounding boxes in the coordinate map. The user may also request acopy of all or a portion of the document 312 or the interactions withthe document 312. For example, the user may request all of the commentsin the document and the document management and collaboration systemretrieve the comments stored in the overlay, convert the comments to thedocument format of the document 312 or some other format and transmitthe comments to the user.

In this example, the client application 300 also includes a graphicaluser element configured as a submit button 304. The submit button 304may be a graphical user interface element of the client application 300where the underlying code of the client application 300 is configuredsuch that selection by an input device of the submit button 304 causesinformation corresponding to the document and/or user interaction withthe document to be transmitted to the service provider for remotestorage or the developer for further processing. The client application300 may transmit the document, the underlay, coordinate map overlay, ahash of the files transmitted, document identification information, userauthentication information and any other information suited for documentcollaboration. The developer may generate one or more API calls based onthe information transmitted from the client application 300. The one ormore API calls may cause the document management and collaborationsystem to perform one or more operations. For example, the developer maygenerate, based at least in part on the information transmitted from theclient application 300, an API call that causes the document managementand collaboration system to save document 312 and the overlay containingfigure 308 and publish the document 312 such that one or more otherusers can access the document 312 and the overlay containing figure 308.

FIG. 4 shows a diagram illustrating a developer 420 interacting with thedocument management and collaboration system 406 in accordance withvarious aspects of the present disclosure. In particular, FIG. 4 showsenvironment 400 which illustrates an example of a user operating acomputing device 402 such as a smartphone or tablet. The user may havecollaborated on the document by providing a selection and associatedinteraction 404 with the document including interaction with a developercomponent. The document may have been created by the user or may havebeen created by another user using an application provided by thedeveloper 420. The other user may have requested collaboration on thedocument. Collaboration on the document may include activities such asselection and associated interaction 404, such as drawing a figure inthe document as described above in connection with FIG. 3. Once the userhas collaborated on the document, the user may then submit the documentto the developer 420. Submission of the document to the developer 420may include the computing device 402 transmitting the document 418 andassociated data to the developer 420. The associated data may includecreated and/or modified annotations, comments, text selection, developercomponent or any other collaborative actions performed in the document.

The developer may receive the document 418 and associated data andperform one or more operations on the document 418 and associated data.For example, the developer 420 may generate, document 418 and associateddata, one or more files to be used with the document management andcollaboration system 406. For example, the developer 420 may generate anunderlay to be used with the document management and collaborationsystem. In another example, the developer 420 may receive informationfrom the computing device 402 and generate an overlay based on thereceived information or insert the received information into theoverlay. The received information may include graphical elements, screencoordinates, location information, media files, sensor data,authentication information, user generated tags or any other informationsuitable for inclusion in the overlay. The developer may then transmitthe files to the document management and collaboration system 406. Thefiles may be transmitted in a variety of different ways including APIcalls, SDK functions, webpage, web application or any other techniquesuitable for transmitting files and information over a network.

In various embodiments, the transmitted files are received by one ormore other systems of the service provider and are directed to theappropriate system or subsystem. For example, the service provider mayoperate one or more listening devices on a network responsible forreceiving requests from users of the service provider and directing therequests to the appropriate system. These other systems may first causethe documents 418 and associated data to be stored in the storage system408 of the service provider and provide notification to the documentmanagement and collaboration system 406 that documents 418 andassociated data have been stored in the storage system 408. For example,a listening device may receive a request from the user to processdocuments 418 and associated data. The listening device may then causethe document 418 and associated data to be stored in the storage system408. After the document 418 and associated data has been stored instorage system 408, the listening device may transmit a notificationincluding a URL to the location of the stored file to the documentmanagement and collaboration system 406. Upon receiving the notificationfrom the listening device, the document management and collaborationsystem 406 may download the documents 418 and associated data based atleast in part on the URL included in the notification. The documentmanagement and collaboration system 406, the database 410 and thestorage system 408 may be located in one or more data centers operatedby the computing resource service provider 414 of the service provider.

The documents 418 and associated data may include the document in thefile format it was originally received by the document management andcollaboration system 406, annotations created by the user, a hash of thedocuments, a hash of the associated data, an overlay, an underlay, acoordinate map, a timestamp, developer component or any otherinformation suitable for document collaboration. Furthermore, thedocuments 418 and associated data may be provided by an API call to theservice provider. Once received by the document management andcollaboration system 406, the document management and collaborationsystem may determine if the documents 418 have been changed. If thedocuments 418 have been changed, the documents can be saved as a newversion of the documents 418. However, if the documents 418 have notbeen changed, they may not be processed and overhead from processing thefiles may be reduced. The document management and collaboration system406 may determine if the documents 418 and/or the associated data haschanged in a variety of different ways. For instance, the hash submittedwith the documents 418 and associated data may be compared with a hashof a previous version of the documents and any associated datacorresponding to the particular version of the document in order todetermine if a change has been made. The hash may further include all ora portion of the file path to determine if a change has been made to thedirectory structure. In another example, an inverted bloom filter may beused to determine if a change has been made in the document.

Once it is determined that a change has been made to the documents 418and/or the associated data, a new version of the document may be storedbased at least in part on the documents 418 and associated datatransmitted by computing device 402. Information corresponding to thedocument such as user selection of text in the document andcorresponding metadata 412 may be written into a database 410 entrycorresponding to the document. The user selection of text andcorresponding metadata 412 may include metadata corresponding to thedocument and the particular version of the document. Furthermore, theinformation corresponding to the document may be based at least in parton the document 418 and data associated with the document as transmittedby the computing device 402. For example, a new version identificationnumber may be generated and written into the database 410 along with theraw coordinate of the user's selection of text and associatedannotations. Other information such as a Uniform Resource Locator (URL)for the documents 418 may also be written into the database. Informationcorresponding to the user responsible for submitting the documents 418and associated data. The annotations or changes submitted by the usermay also be stored in the database 410. In various embodiments, thedatabase 410 contains the raw coordinates for the user selection andonly the documents in universal format 416 are stored in the storagesystem 408.

After the information in the database has been updated, the documentmanagement and collaboration system 406 can store the new versions ofthe documents 418 and associated data. The document management andcollaboration system 406 may retrieve the documents 418 and associateddata from the storage system 408 of the service provider or the documentmanagement and collaboration system may have received the documents 418directly from the computing device 402. The document management andcollaboration system 406 may receive the underlay, the coordinate mapand overlay from the computing device 402 and/or the developer 420 andassociated the underlay, the coordinate map and overlay with a newversion of the document. If the documents 418 as received are not in theuniversal file format the document management and collaboration systemmay covert the documents 418 to a universal file format and generate theassociated coordinate map. Along with the underlay and coordinate map,one or more thumbnail images of the documents may also be generated.

The document management and collaboration system 406 may store theannotations and/or comments included in the documents and associateddata 418 when saving the new version of the document. As describedabove, the annotations to a document may be stored in a separate filewhich may contain both the annotations and the coordinates of the userselected text associated with the annotations. The documents andassociated data 418 may also include developer components or informationcorresponding to developer components. This information may be used by auser device to draw the highlighted words and the associated commentsand/or developer components. The document management and collaborationsystem 406 may receive the user annotations and associated textselection directly from the computing device 402 from which the userentered the information or from some other service or system of theservice provider. The document management and collaboration system 406may update the annotation index using the user annotations andassociated coordinates of the user selected words based at least in parton the bounding box for each word. The text of the annotations and/orthe documents 418 may be extracted in order to enable searching of thedocuments. In various embodiments, the extracted text is transmitted toone or more other systems of the service provider in order to update asearch index which enables users to search documents stored remotely bythe service provider.

In various embodiments, all or a portion of the user selection andmetadata 412 may be injected into the document by the documentmanagement and collaboration system 406. The user selection and metadata412 may be injected into the document by the document management andcollaboration system 406 once it has been received or it may be storedin database 410 and injected into the document once an indication toinject the user selection and metadata 412 has been received. Thedocument management and collaboration system 406 may inject the userselection and metadata 412 by retrieving the document in the file formatit was originally received by the document management and collaborationsystem 406 or a copy of the document in the format originally receivedand extracting data from the user selection and metadata 412. Theextracted data may include user generated comments and annotations aswell as the corresponding document coordinates for the user generatedcomments and annotations. Based at least in part on the documentcoordinates and the coordinate map corresponding to the document, thedocument management and collaboration system 406 may determine a startlocation and an end location for inserting the extracted data. Based atleast in part on the start location and the end location the documentmanagement and collaboration system 406 may inject the extracted datathereby creating a new version of the document. The document managementand collaboration system 406 or one or more other systems of thecomputing resource service provider 414 may then generate the documentin universal format 416, underlay and coordinate map based at least inpart on the new version of the document. The document in universalformat 416 and other data generated based at least in part on the newversion of the document may be stored in storage system 408. If only aportion of the user selection and metadata was injected into thedocument, the remainder of the user selection and metadata may be storedin the database 410. The developer 420 may also indicate user selectionand metadata 412 to be injected into the document including developercomponents stored in the user selection and metadata to be injected intothe document. For example, the developer 420 may transmit an API call tothe document management and collaboration system 406, requestinginjection of developer components stored in the overlay such as thegraphical elements described above in connection with FIG. 3.

After a new version of the document is stored, a notification may besent to one or more users specified in the database. For example, theuser specified as the owner or creator of the document may be notifiedthat a new version of the document has been created. In another example,if the documents 418 and associated data were transmitted to aparticular user for collaboration, the user responsible for having thedocuments 418 and associated data transmitted to the particular user maybe notified that the requested collaborator has uploaded a new versionof the document. The notification may be sent by one or more systems ofthe service provider and may include e-mail, SMS or any other suitablemeans for notifying a user.

New versions of the documents 418 and associated data may be stored bythe service provider without an explicit command to make a new versionof the documents 418 and associated data. For example, when a usercollaborates on and/or edits a document and submits the document forstorage with the service provider, the documents 418 and associated datatransmitted from the user's computing device 402 to the service providerare used to store a new version of the document without an explicitcommand from the user to make a new version of the document.Furthermore, previous versions of documents 418 and associated data maybe persistently stored in one or more storage systems of the serviceprovider until deleted by explicit command to delete or another event(e.g., an account remaining inactive for a specified amount of time).

FIG. 5 shows a diagram illustrating document management in accordancewith various aspects of the present disclosure. Accordingly, FIG. 5shows environment 500 which illustrates an example of a user operating acomputing device 502 such as a personal computer or desktop computer.Using computing device 502 the user may request one or more documents504 or portions of the documents 504 from the document management andcollaboration system 506 or the developer 520. In various embodiments,the one or more documents 504 are included in a request forcollaboration from one or more other users. Once the document managementand collaboration system 506 or the developer 520 has received a requestit may determine, based at least in part on the requested, one or morefiles to transmit or caused to be transmitted to computing device 502.For example, the document management and collaboration system 506 maytransmit one or more other users' interactions with the document in thedocument format the document was submitted in. In another example, thedeveloper 520 may transmit an API request to the document management andcollaboration system 506. The document management and collaborationsystem 506 may transmit the documents 504 and associated data to thedeveloper 520 and the developer 520 may enable the user to access thedocument 504.

The document management and collaboration system 506 may determine thefiles to transmit by querying a database 510 for informationcorresponding to the request. For example, the request may include adocument identification number or some other identifying information.The document management and collaboration system 506 may query database510 based at least in part on information submitted in the request inorder to determine a document or a particular document version totransmit to the computing device 502. In various embodiments, a requestfor collaboration on a document from a user includes a specific versionof the document for which collaboration is requested. Based on theresults returned from the database 510, the document management andcollaboration system 506 may determine a location of one or more filesto transmit to the computing device 502 or the developer 520. All or aportion of the files may be located in one or more storage systemsoperated by the developer 520. The developer 520 may also have copies ofall or a portion of the files. For example, the document management andcollaboration system 506 may determine an underlay, overlay, coordinatemap and other data associated with the document to transmit to computingdevice 502 or the underlay, overlay, coordinate map and other dataassociated with the document may be stored by the developer 520. Thismay include user selection and metadata 512 associated with the documentas well as the documents and associated data 516 themselves.

The document management and collaboration system 506 may also determinea location of the files and transmit the location of the files to thecomputing device 502 enabling the computing device 502 or developer 520to retrieve the files. The underlay and coordinate map may be stored instorage system 508 and the metadata corresponding to the document may bestored in database 510. The database 510, storage system 508 and thedocument management and collaboration system 506 may be located in thesame datacenter operated by the computing resource service provider 514or may be located in different datacenters. The document management andcollaboration system 506 may also inject all or a portion of the userselection and metadata 512 into the documents 516 before transmittingthe documents to computing device 502 or developer 520. Furthermore, ifthe user requests only the user selection and metadata 512 or a portionof the user selection and metadata 512, the document management andcollaboration system 506 may retrieve the requested information from thedatabase 510. For example, the user may request only a particular user'sinteractions with the document. The document management andcollaboration system 506 may then retrieve the particular user'sinteractions with the document from the database 510 and transmit theparticular user's interactions with the document to the computing device502 or the developer. The document management and collaboration system506 may also convert the user selection and metadata 512 into thedocument format the document was originally submitted in or anotherdocument format.

FIG. 6 shows an illustrative example of process 600 which may be used tostored document and associated data received from developer. The process600 may be performed by any suitable system, such as the documentmanagement and collaboration system 506, described above in connectionto FIG. 5. Returning to FIG. 6, in an embodiment, the process 600includes receiving a request to upload document 602. The request may begenerated by a developer as described above in connect with FIG. 4. Therequest may include one or more API calls containing information aboutthe document, the developer and/or a user associated with the document.The user may be a collaborator on a document with one or morepermissions to edit the particular document. The user may generateannotations, comments or developer components using a computing devicesuch as those described above with reference to FIG. 3. The computingdevice may transmit the document directly to the document management andcollaboration system performing process 600 or the developer may receivethe document from the computing device and transmit the document onbehalf of the user. If the document is stored remotely on the storagesystem operated the developer, the document management and collaborationsystem may download the document and any other corresponding filedirectly from the remote storage system.

The document management and collaboration system may then receive thedocument and corresponding information 604. For example, the documentand corresponding information 604 may be transmitted to the documentmanagement and collaboration system in an API call from the developer.The document management and collaboration system may then updatemetadata corresponding to the document in a database 606. For example,the document management and collaboration system may write the locationof the document into the database as described above in connection forFIG. 4. The metadata may also include information corresponding to thedeveloper, such as a developer component or authentication informationfor the developer. Once the document is received it may be determined ifthe document is in an appropriate format 608. If the document is not inthe appropriate format it may be converted to the appropriate format610. For example, if the document is not in PDF format the documentmanagement and collaboration system may convert the document to PDFformat. In numerous variations of process 600, other file formats may beused such as image file formats or other file formats configurable toinclude a device independent coordinate system.

If the document is already in PDF format, for example if the developerconverted the document into PDF format prior to transmitting it to thedocument management and collaboration system, process 600 may continueand generate a coordinate map corresponding to the document 612. Thecoordinate map may be based on the location of character, word ordelimiters in the document. In various embodiments, the coordinate mapis a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) file generated based at least inpart on the document, where the JSON file defines word bounding boxesfor all the words contained in the files. A variety of techniques may beused to generate the coordinate map. For example, the document isconverted to PDF file format and may then be processed as a steam ofcharacters. For each character in the document the document managementand collaboration system may determine the top-left coordinate, and theheight and width for each particular character. Each character in a lineof the document may then be bound together with a line bounding box. Theline bounding box may be generated by processing the stream ofcharacters until a delimiter indicating the end of the line is reached.Line bounding boxes may also be generated by determining if the twoconsecutive characters processed in the stream satisfy the conditionsfor being on the same line.

For example, two characters may be considered on the same line if thetop-left coordinate of the first character is above the top-left of thesecond character and the base of the first character is above the baseof the second character. For any two consecutive characters in thestream, the document management and collaboration system may determinethis information based at least in part on the top-left coordinate, andthe height and width determined for each character. Other conditionsexist that, if satisfied, indicate that two characters are on the sameline. If the top-left coordinate of the second character is above thetop-left of the first character and the base of the second character isabove the base of the first character, the character can be consideredon the same line. Similarly if the top-left coordinate and the base ofeither character is within the top-left coordinate and the base of theother character, the character can be considered on the same line.

Once it is determined that two consecutive characters are no longer onthe same line, the end of the line bounding box may be drawn. The linebounding box may be drawn by using the top-left coordinate of the firstcharacter on the line and the top-left coordinate and width of the lastcharacter in the line. After all the line bounding boxes are computed,each line may be processed individually to determine a bounding box foreach word in the line. As the document is processed the average width ofwhite spaces and characters in the document is computed. If the distancebetween current characters and the next character is less than averagewidth of the characters in the document as computed, the characters maybe considered as belonging to the same word. If the distance is greaterthan the average width of the character in the document, the nextcharacter may be considered as the next word in the line bounding box.Once it is determined that the next character belongs to the next word,the document management and collaboration system may generate the wordbounding boxes in a similar manner as it did the line bounding box.

Once the document management and collaboration system has generated theword bounding boxes it may be determined from the bounding boxes thecoordinates of each word in the document. Padding may also be added toeach bounding box around the words in order to facilitate user selectionof words during collaboration of a document. The document management andcollaboration system may determine an appropriate amount of padding toadd to each word bounding box based at least in part on the height ofeach line and the spacing between lines, dividing the areaproportionally in such a way that the word bounding boxes touch. Thebounding box information generated by the document management andcollaboration system may be stored in a file such as a JSON file.

In numerous variations to process 600, the coordinate map may begenerated by the developer and included with the document whentransmitted to the document management and collaboration system. Thedocument management and collaboration system may the update theannotation index and search index correspond to the document 614. Theasynchronous search engine 246 may extract text from the document and/orcorresponding files and use the extracted text to update the annotationindex and the search index. The coordinate map and document may then bestored in a storage system 616 operated by the service provider. Thefile may be stored with the original document in the storage system ofthe service provider. The document management and collaboration systemmay then return a document identifier 618 to the developer. The documentidentifier may be configure to enable the developer to access thedocument and associated data stored in one or more storage systems ofthe service provider by the document management and collaborationsystem.

FIG. 7 shows an illustrative example of process 700 which may be used toprovide document management and collaboration of one or more users of adeveloper. The process 700 may be performed by any suitable system, suchas the developer 520, described above in connection to FIG. 5. Returningto FIG. 7, in an embodiment, the process 700 includes transmitting arequest for a document 702. The request may be an appropriatelyconfigured API call generated by the developer including one or moredocument identifiers and authentication information. The request may beassociated with one or more users of the developer and/or users of thedocument management and collaboration system. The developer may thenreceive the requested document and associated data 704. The associateddata may include an underlay, coordinate map and/or overlay associatedwith the document. In numerous variations to process 700, the documentand associated information may be pre-fetched or copies of the documentand associated information may already be stored with the developer.

Returning to FIG. 7, the developer may perform one or more operations onthe document 706. For example, the developer may provide a storageaggregation service to one or more users and the developer may store thedocument and associated data for the one or more users. In anotherexample, the developer may provide one or more developer components tothe one or more users, such as the ability to draw figures in thedocument as described above in connection to FIG. 3. The developer mayalso insert information into the document such as image, animation orvideo files. The developer may convert to document to one or more otherdocument formats or extract information from the document for use by thedocument management and collaboration system. The developer may thentransmit a request to upload the document 708 to the document managementand collaboration system. The document may include associated dataand/or information generated by the developer during the performance ofthe one or more operations. The request may include the document or mayinclude information corresponding to the location of the documentthereby enabling the document management and collaboration system toretrieve the document.

The developer may then upload or cause to be uploaded the document 710to the document management and collaboration system or one or moreservers or service of the service provider. In response to uploading thedocument, the developer may receive a document identifier 712. Thedocument identifier may be configured to identify the document and otherdata uploaded by the developer. The document identifier may include aURL or URI corresponding to the document. The document identifier mayalso include information contained in the database 410 as describedabove in FIG. 4 or the document identifier may point to informationcontained in the database 410.

FIG. 8 shows an illustrative example of process 800 which may be used toprovide document management and collaboration of one or more users of adeveloper, such as a storage aggregation developer. The process 800 maybe performed by any suitable system, such as the developer 520,described above in connection to FIG. 5. Returning to FIG. 8, in anembodiment, the process 800 includes transmitting a request for adocument and associated data 802. The request may be an API callgenerate by the developer including a document identifier. Theassociated data may be identified by the document identifier or anotheridentifier. The associated data may include data generated by thedeveloper corresponding to one or more developer components, such asdescribed above in connection with FIG. 3. In response to the request todocument management and collaboration system may transmit the documentto the developer or may transmit the document identifier to thedeveloper thereby enabling the developer to have access to the documentand associated data. The developer may then receive the document andassociated data 804. Receiving the data may include retrieving the datafrom one or more remote storage devices.

Once the developer has received the document and associated data 804,the developer may store the document and associated data 806. Thedocument and associated data may be stored in one or more storage deviceoperated by the developer. The developer may aggregate document andassociated data for one or more users of the document management andcollaboration system. The developer may then notify the user 808 thatthe document and associated data has been stored with the developer. Thenotification may include providing the document and associated data to acomputing device operated by the user or enabling the computing deviceoperated by the user to access the document and associated data storedby the developer.

FIG. 9 illustrates aspects of an example environment 900 forimplementing aspects in accordance with various embodiments. As will beappreciated, although a web-based environment is used for purposes ofexplanation, different environments may be used, as appropriate, toimplement various embodiments. The environment includes an electronicclient device 902, which can include any appropriate device operable tosend and/or receive requests, messages or information over anappropriate network 904 and, in some embodiments, convey informationback to a user of the device. Examples of such client devices includepersonal computers, cell phones, handheld messaging devices, laptopcomputers, tablet computers, set-top boxes, personal data assistants,embedded computer systems, electronic book readers and the like. Thenetwork can include any appropriate network, including an intranet, theInternet, a cellular network, a local area network, a satellite networkor any other such network and/or combination thereof. Components usedfor such a system can depend at least in part upon the type of networkand/or environment selected. Protocols and components for communicatingvia such a network are well known and will not be discussed herein indetail. Communication over the network can be enabled by wired orwireless connections and combinations thereof. In this example, thenetwork includes the Internet, as the environment includes a web server906 for receiving requests and serving content in response thereto,although for other networks an alternative device serving a similarpurpose could be used as would be apparent to one of ordinary skill inthe art.

The illustrative environment includes at least one application server908 and a data store 910. It should be understood that there can beseveral application servers, layers or other elements, processes orcomponents, which may be chained or otherwise configured, which caninteract to perform tasks such as obtaining data from an appropriatedata store. Servers, as used herein, may be implemented in various ways,such as hardware devices or virtual computer systems. In some contexts,servers may refer to a programming module being executed on a computersystem. As used herein, unless otherwise stated or clear from context,the term “data store” refers to any device or combination of devicescapable of storing, accessing and retrieving data, which may include anycombination and number of data servers, databases, data storage devicesand data storage media, in any standard, distributed, virtual orclustered environment. The application server can include anyappropriate hardware, software and firmware for integrating with thedata store as needed to execute aspects of one or more applications forthe client device, handling some or all of the data access and businesslogic for an application. The application server may provide accesscontrol services in cooperation with the data store and is able togenerate content including, but not limited to, text, graphics, audio,video and/or other content usable to be provided to the user, which maybe served to the user by the web server in the form of HyperText MarkupLanguage (“HTML”), Extensible Markup Language (“XML”), JavaScript,Cascading Style Sheets (“CSS”) or another appropriate client-sidestructured language. Content transferred to a client device may beprocessed by the client device to provide the content in one or moreforms including, but not limited to, forms that are perceptible to theuser audibly, visually and/or through other senses including touch,taste, and/or smell. The handling of all requests and responses, as wellas the delivery of content between the client device 902 and theapplication server 908, can be handled by the web server using PHP:Hypertext Preprocessor (“PHP”), Python, Ruby, Perl, Java, HTML, XML oranother appropriate server-side structured language in this example. Itshould be understood that the web and application servers are notrequired and are merely example components, as structured code discussedherein can be executed on any appropriate device or host machine asdiscussed elsewhere herein. Further, operations described herein asbeing performed by a single device may, unless otherwise clear fromcontext, be performed collectively by multiple devices, which may form adistributed and/or virtual system.

The data store 910 can include several separate data tables, databases,data documents, dynamic data storage schemes and/or other data storagemechanisms and media for storing data relating to a particular aspect ofthe present disclosure. For example, the data store illustrated mayinclude mechanisms for storing production data 912 and user information916, which can be used to serve content for the production side. Thedata store also is shown to include a mechanism for storing log data914, which can be used for reporting, analysis or other such purposes.It should be understood that there can be many other aspects that mayneed to be stored in the data store, such as page image information andaccess rights information, which can be stored in any of the abovelisted mechanisms as appropriate or in additional mechanisms in the datastore 910. The data store 910 is operable, through logic associatedtherewith, to receive instructions from the application server 908 andobtain, update or otherwise process data in response thereto. Theapplication server 908 may provide static, dynamic or a combination ofstatic and dynamic data in response to the received instructions.Dynamic data, such as data used in web logs (blogs), shoppingapplications, news services and other such applications may be generatedby server-side structured languages as described herein or may beprovided by a content management system (“CMS”) operating on, or underthe control of, the application server. In one example, a user, througha device operated by the user, might submit a search request for acertain type of item. In this case, the data store might access the userinformation to verify the identity of the user and can access thecatalog detail information to obtain information about items of thattype. The information then can be returned to the user, such as in aresults listing on a web page that the user is able to view via abrowser on the user device 902. Information for a particular item ofinterest can be viewed in a dedicated page or window of the browser. Itshould be noted, however, that embodiments of the present disclosure arenot necessarily limited to the context of web pages, but may be moregenerally applicable to processing requests in general, where therequests are not necessarily requests for content.

Each server typically will include an operating system that providesexecutable program instructions for the general administration andoperation of that server and typically will include a computer-readablestorage medium (e.g., a hard disk, random access memory, read onlymemory, etc.) storing instructions that, when executed by a processor ofthe server, allow the server to perform its intended functions. Suitableimplementations for the operating system and general functionality ofthe servers are known or commercially available and are readilyimplemented by persons having ordinary skill in the art, particularly inlight of the disclosure herein.

The environment, in one embodiment, is a distributed and/or virtualcomputing environment utilizing several computer systems and componentsthat are interconnected via communication links, using one or morecomputer networks or direct connections. However, it will be appreciatedby those of ordinary skill in the art that such a system could operateequally well in a system having fewer or a greater number of componentsthan are illustrated in FIG. 9. Thus, the depiction of the system 900 inFIG. 9 should be taken as being illustrative in nature and not limitingto the scope of the disclosure.

The various embodiments further can be implemented in a wide variety ofoperating environments, which in some cases can include one or more usercomputers, computing devices or processing devices which can be used tooperate any of a number of applications. User or client devices caninclude any of a number of general purpose personal computers, such asdesktop, laptop or tablet computers running a standard operating system,as well as cellular, wireless and handheld devices running mobilesoftware and capable of supporting a number of networking and messagingprotocols. Such a system also can include a number of workstationsrunning any of a variety of commercially-available operating systems andother known applications for purposes such as development and databasemanagement. These devices also can include other electronic devices,such as dummy terminals, thin-clients, gaming systems and other devicescapable of communicating via a network. These devices also can includevirtual devices such as virtual machines, hypervisors and other virtualdevices capable of communicating via a network.

Various embodiments of the present disclosure utilize at least onenetwork that would be familiar to those skilled in the art forsupporting communications using any of a variety ofcommercially-available protocols, such as Transmission ControlProtocol/Internet Protocol (“TCP/IP”), User Datagram Protocol (“UDP”),protocols operating in various layers of the Open System Interconnection(“OSI”) model, File Transfer Protocol (“FTP”), Universal Plug and Play(“UpnP”), Network File System (“NFS”), Common Internet File System(“CIFS”) and AppleTalk. The network can be, for example, a local areanetwork, a wide-area network, a virtual private network, the Internet,an intranet, an extranet, a public switched telephone network, aninfrared network, a wireless network, a satellite network and anycombination thereof.

In embodiments utilizing a web server, the web server can run any of avariety of server or mid-tier applications, including Hypertext TransferProtocol (“HTTP”) servers, FTP servers, Common Gateway Interface (“CGI”)servers, data servers, Java servers, Apache servers and businessapplication servers. The server(s) also may be capable of executingprograms or scripts in response to requests from user devices, such asby executing one or more web applications that may be implemented as oneor more scripts or programs written in any programming language, such asJava®, C, C# or C++, or any scripting language, such as Ruby, PHP, Perl,Python or TCL, as well as combinations thereof. The server(s) may alsoinclude database servers, including without limitation thosecommercially available from Oracle®, Microsoft®, Sybase® and IBM® aswell as open-source servers such as MySQL, Postgres, SQLite, MongoDB,and any other server capable of storing, retrieving and accessingstructured or unstructured data. Database servers may includetable-based servers, document-based servers, unstructured servers,relational servers, non-relational servers or combinations of theseand/or other database servers.

The environment can include a variety of data stores and other memoryand storage media as discussed above. These can reside in a variety oflocations, such as on a storage medium local to (and/or resident in) oneor more of the computers or remote from any or all of the computersacross the network. In a particular set of embodiments, the informationmay reside in a storage-area network (“SAN”) familiar to those skilledin the art. Similarly, any necessary files for performing the functionsattributed to the computers, servers or other network devices may bestored locally and/or remotely, as appropriate. Where a system includescomputerized devices, each such device can include hardware elementsthat may be electrically coupled via a bus, the elements including, forexample, at least one central processing unit (“CPU” or “processor”), atleast one input device (e.g., a mouse, keyboard, controller, touchscreen or keypad) and at least one output device (e.g., a displaydevice, printer or speaker). Such a system may also include one or morestorage devices, such as disk drives, optical storage devices andsolid-state storage devices such as random access memory (“RAM”) orread-only memory (“ROM”), as well as removable media devices, memorycards, flash cards, etc.

Such devices also can include a computer-readable storage media reader,a communications device (e.g., a modem, a network card (wireless orwired), an infrared communication device, etc.) and working memory asdescribed above. The computer-readable storage media reader can beconnected with, or configured to receive, a computer-readable storagemedium, representing remote, local, fixed and/or removable storagedevices as well as storage media for temporarily and/or more permanentlycontaining, storing, transmitting and retrieving computer-readableinformation. The system and various devices also typically will includea number of software applications, modules, services or other elementslocated within at least one working memory device, including anoperating system and application programs, such as a client applicationor web browser. It should be appreciated that alternate embodiments mayhave numerous variations from that described above. For example,customized hardware might also be used and/or particular elements mightbe implemented in hardware, software (including portable software, suchas applets) or both. Further, connection to other computing devices suchas network input/output devices may be employed.

Storage media and computer readable media for containing code, orportions of code, can include any appropriate media known or used in theart, including storage media and communication media, such as, but notlimited to, volatile and non-volatile, removable and non-removable mediaimplemented in any method or technology for storage and/or transmissionof information such as computer readable instructions, data structures,program modules or other data, including RAM, ROM, Electrically ErasableProgrammable Read-Only Memory (“EEPROM”), flash memory or other memorytechnology, Compact Disc Read-Only Memory (“CD-ROM”), digital versatiledisk (DVD) or other optical storage, magnetic cassettes, magnetic tape,magnetic disk storage or other magnetic storage devices or any othermedium which can be used to store the desired information and which canbe accessed by the system device. Based on the disclosure and teachingsprovided herein, a person of ordinary skill in the art will appreciateother ways and/or methods to implement the various embodiments.

The specification and drawings are, accordingly, to be regarded in anillustrative rather than a restrictive sense. It will, however, beevident that various modifications and changes may be made thereuntowithout departing from the broader spirit and scope of the invention asset forth in the claims.

Other variations are within the spirit of the present disclosure. Thus,while the disclosed techniques are susceptible to various modificationsand alternative constructions, certain illustrated embodiments thereofare shown in the drawings and have been described above in detail. Itshould be understood, however, that there is no intention to limit theinvention to the specific form or forms disclosed, but on the contrary,the intention is to cover all modifications, alternative constructionsand equivalents falling within the spirit and scope of the invention, asdefined in the appended claims.

The use of the terms “a” and “an” and “the” and similar referents in thecontext of describing the disclosed embodiments (especially in thecontext of the following claims) are to be construed to cover both thesingular and the plural, unless otherwise indicated herein or clearlycontradicted by context. The terms “comprising,” “having,” “including”and “containing” are to be construed as open-ended terms (i.e., meaning“including, but not limited to,”) unless otherwise noted. The term“connected,” when unmodified and referring to physical connections, isto be construed as partly or wholly contained within, attached to orjoined together, even if there is something intervening. Recitation ofranges of values herein are merely intended to serve as a shorthandmethod of referring individually to each separate value falling withinthe range, unless otherwise indicated herein and each separate value isincorporated into the specification as if it were individually recitedherein. The use of the term “set” (e.g., “a set of items”) or “subset”unless otherwise noted or contradicted by context, is to be construed asa nonempty collection comprising one or more members. Further, unlessotherwise noted or contradicted by context, the term “subset” of acorresponding set does not necessarily denote a proper subset of thecorresponding set, but the subset and the corresponding set may beequal.

Conjunctive language, such as phrases of the form “at least one of A, B,and C,” or “at least one of A, B and C,” unless specifically statedotherwise or otherwise clearly contradicted by context, is otherwiseunderstood with the context as used in general to present that an item,term, etc., may be either A or B or C, or any nonempty subset of the setof A and B and C. For instance, in the illustrative example of a sethaving three members, the conjunctive phrases “at least one of A, B, andC” and “at least one of A, B and C” refer to any of the following sets:{A}, {B}, {C}, {A, B}, {A, C}, {B, C}, {A, B, C}. Thus, such conjunctivelanguage is not generally intended to imply that certain embodimentsrequire at least one of A, at least one of B and at least one of C eachto be present.

Operations of processes described herein can be performed in anysuitable order unless otherwise indicated herein or otherwise clearlycontradicted by context. Processes described herein (or variationsand/or combinations thereof) may be performed under the control of oneor more computer systems configured with executable instructions and maybe implemented as code (e.g., executable instructions, one or morecomputer programs or one or more applications) executing collectively onone or more processors, by hardware or combinations thereof. The codemay be stored on a computer-readable storage medium, for example, in theform of a computer program comprising a plurality of instructionsexecutable by one or more processors. The computer-readable storagemedium may be non-transitory.

The use of any and all examples, or exemplary language (e.g., “such as”)provided herein, is intended merely to better illuminate embodiments ofthe invention and does not pose a limitation on the scope of theinvention unless otherwise claimed. No language in the specificationshould be construed as indicating any non-claimed element as essentialto the practice of the invention.

Preferred embodiments of this disclosure are described herein, includingthe best mode known to the inventors for carrying out the invention.Variations of those preferred embodiments may become apparent to thoseof ordinary skill in the art upon reading the foregoing description. Theinventors expect skilled artisans to employ such variations asappropriate and the inventors intend for embodiments of the presentdisclosure to be practiced otherwise than as specifically describedherein. Accordingly, the scope of the present disclosure includes allmodifications and equivalents of the subject matter recited in theclaims appended hereto as permitted by applicable law. Moreover, anycombination of the above-described elements in all possible variationsthereof is encompassed by the scope of the present disclosure unlessotherwise indicated herein or otherwise clearly contradicted by context.

All references, including publications, patent applications and patents,cited herein are hereby incorporated by reference to the same extent asif each reference were individually and specifically indicated to beincorporated by reference and were set forth in its entirety herein.

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 21. A computer-implemented method, comprising: receivinginformation indicating one or more operations performed on a documentsuch that the one or more operations cause an overlay corresponding tothe document to be modified; transmitting, over a network, informationto identify the document and the overlay corresponding to the document;receiving an identifier to identify a new version of the document and anunderlay corresponding to the document; and; causing the identifier tobe stored such that one or more collaborators have access to theidentifier.
 22. The computer-implemented method of claim 21, wherein thedocument is of a universal file format.
 23. The computer-implementedmethod of claim 21, wherein the computer-implemented method furtherincludes storing the document in a document management and collaborationsystem.
 24. The computer-implemented method of claim 21, wherein thecomputer-implemented method further includes transmitting coordinatescorresponding to a location of annotations made to the document by adocument management and collaboration system.
 25. Thecomputer-implemented method of claim 21, wherein thecomputer-implemented method further includes converting the document toa universal file format.
 26. The computer-implemented method of claim21, wherein transmitting a second version of the document to one or morecollaborators for collaboration includes transmitting a second documentidentifier to one or more collaborators such that the second documentidentifier enables the one or more collaborators to access the document.27. A system, comprising: one or more processors; memory withinstructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, causethe system to: obtain, from a user, one or more operations on a documentsuch that the operations cause an overlay corresponding to the documentto be modified; transmit, over a network, information configured toidentify the document and the overlay corresponding to the document;obtain an identifier that identifies a new version of the document andan underlay corresponding to the document; and cause the identifier tobe stored such that one or more collaborators have access to theidentifier.
 28. The system of claim 27, wherein the memory furtherincludes instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors,cause the system to transmit one or more media files associate with theoverlay corresponding to the document.
 29. The system of claim 27,wherein the memory further includes instructions that, when executed bythe one or more processors, cause the system to generate the documentand the overlay based at least in part on the one or more useroperations.
 30. The system of claim 27, wherein transmitting theinformation configured to identify the document and the overlaycorresponding to the document further includes transmitting an underlaycorresponding to the document.
 31. The system of claim 27, wherein thememory further includes instructions that, when executed by the one ormore processors, cause the system to: obtain, from at least one of theone or more collaborators, a second overlay corresponding to thedocument containing information corresponding to collaborations on thedocument; and transmit information configured to identify the documentand the second overlay to the user.
 32. The system of claim 27, whereinthe overlay includes non-alphanumeric data.
 33. The system of claim 27,wherein the memory further includes instructions that, when executed bythe one or more processors, cause the system to: transmit a request fora second document; modify a second overlay corresponding to the seconddocument based at least in part on the user's interactions with thesecond document; and transmit a request to store the second document andsecond overlay remotely from the user such that the second document isaccessible to the user and inaccessible to the one or morecollaborators.
 34. A non-transitory computer-readable storage mediumhaving collectively stored thereon executable instructions that, whenexecuted by one or more processors of a computer system, cause thecomputer system to at least: transmit, over a network, a document and anoverlay associated with the document, the overlay including informationcorresponding to one or more collaborations on the document; receive, inresponse to the transmitted document and the overlay, informationconfigured to identify a second version of the document corresponding tothe one or more collaborations on the document; and transmit anindication to one or more users that the one or more collaborations havebeen transmitted.
 35. The non-transitory computer-readable storagemedium of claim 34, wherein the instructions further compriseinstructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, causethe computer system to generate, based at least in part on the documentand the overlay, a coordinate map corresponding to the location ofcontent in the document.
 36. The non-transitory computer-readablestorage medium of claim 34, wherein the instructions further compriseinstructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, causethe computer system to generate the document and the overlay based atleast in part on the one or more user interactions with the document.37. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 34,wherein the instructions that cause the computer system to generate thedocument and the overlay further include instructions that cause thecomputer system to insert a animation into the overlay.
 38. Thenon-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 34, wherein theinstructions further comprise instructions that, when executed by theone or more processors, cause the computer system to request, from atleast a portion of the one or more users, collaboration on the document.39. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 34,wherein the instructions further comprise instructions that, whenexecuted by the one or more processors, cause the computer system totransmit, to the document management and collaboration system, data tobe injected into the document.
 40. The non-transitory computer-readablestorage medium of claim 34, wherein the instructions that cause thecomputer system to transmit the document and the overlay further includeinstructions that cause the computer system to transmit the documentsuch that the document is only accessible to a particular userresponsible for causing the document to be transmitted.